


hansei

by pudgypanda



Series: satoru [1]
Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Flashbacks, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 06:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18493591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pudgypanda/pseuds/pudgypanda
Summary: hansei: admitting fault, pledging restitution__When Sakura finally decides to join him in his travels abroad, Sasuke learns much more about the woman whose back he watches each day - mostly, he learns how little he really knew. But what he does find confronts him with the intimate knowledge of a history he can never truly rectify and a future he does not know if he deserves.





	hansei

Her reaction unfolds so quickly and so terribly that Sasuke isn’t sure he would have caught without his Sharingan. It catches him more off guard than it should, especially since he should have anticipated something like it from the moment Sakura joined him on the road.

He knows in reality that he would never have been able to persuade her to stay put in the village while he was indefinitely away. Hell, if six years of defection had not changed her mind, there was no way that a mere plea to leave his atonement up to him could ever have held up against Sakura’s iron-clad resolve. He supposes that if anything, he is rather impressed that she actually left him to his own devices for as long as she did.

Then again, Konoha had been in dire need of her too, and Sakura had never been the kind of kunoichi to put her own desires before her duty to the village. He had stayed up to date on developments via Kakashi because his official correspondence regarding his reconnaissance work sometimes strayed from strict business. His old sensei had seemed to sense - as he had always, infuriatingly, been able to - the things Sasuke’s pride would not permit him to ask. Without prompting, Kakashi had mercifully supplied little details, shrewdly incorporated under the pretense of relevance to Sasuke's mission, that had sustained Sasuke through the harsh months of solo travel. The Rokudaime figured out long ago exactly how to help him in the simplest, least intrusive way possible long ago, and he is grateful for it.

And so he had known of some things despite his absence - that Sakura had been at the forefront of coordinating the long-term inpatient care of the multitudes of shinobi who had been casualties of the war; that she had pioneered several new rehabilitation methods to get the wounded back on their feet quicker; that she had somehow instituted a new home care division, even as the med corps had struggled with understaffing, to improve the quality of life for those who had been left disabled. She had seemed tireless, and Sasuke would be deluding himself if he did not acknowledge the pride that had crept over him with each report from Kakashi.

But nothing compares to the feeling of having Sakura by his side. He is loath to admit that after over two long years of being on his own, her presence is a tether back to his own humanity. Just the quiet sound of her traveling cloak rustling ahead of him in their two-person defensive scouting formation grounds him. When she turns her head to look back at him, he sees in her gaze an affection he is already too aware of and which only deepens the chasm of guilt in his heart.

Sasuke can simultaneously read the woman whose back he watches each day like the script of his own mind - and yet he also barely knows her at all. Naruto is different. There has always been an innate understanding between them and their fists, even with all the distance - both geographic and metaphysical - between them back when Sasuke was lost to the Curse of Hatred. It had hardly shocked either of them when Rikudō Sennin revealed their deeper connection.

But Sakura…he can never admit how tightly he still clings to the memories of Team 7’s genin days, and he certainly can never voice how much that fragile waif of a girl with impractically long hair had come to mean to him in that short span. But the Sakura alongside him now is not the same girl he had - and he winces at the memory - thanked before swiftly knocking out and leaving on a park bench. Sasuke finds himself learning things about her that he feels he should have known ages ago. And some things, he thinks bitterly, he should never have had to learn, because Sakura should never have had to go through it at all.

Nothing makes this clearer than the first time he reaches out to Sakura while her back is turned - how the instant before he makes contact with her sloping shoulder, she whirls on him in a flurry of pale pink and furious peridot, fist already coalescing chakra and Seal of a Hundred gleaming dangerously from her forehead.

In a testament to his shock, not even basic training would have saved Sasuke, because he forgets to do so much as dodge. She manages to stop her deadly punch millimeters from the tip of his nose. And in the mere heartbeat before Sakura, ever in-control of her chakra and all else, manages to smooth her expression over, he sees it all reflected in those shimmering green eyes, wide with barely-repressed memory - the last time he had appeared behind her without warning - his same eyes at that time empty and yielding to nothing but a deep void, his now-gentle fingers then flashing with Chidori, reaching to pierce through her chest.

When they wake in the morning, they pack up camp swiftly, trading only the necessary phrases, quick and clipped. They don’t speak of it.

—

The days pass quickly, and yet as they move from lead to lead, time seems to slow and then stop altogether. Sasuke notices when Sakura’s hand quavers, or her step stutters. Although he knows her reaction could just be yet ugly scar war had carved into all of them, the true horror of how uniquely central he is in each instance of Sakura’s hurt dawns upon him with increasingly brutal transparency every day.

She never falters in the actual combat they find themselves in. Initially a tad clumsy, they slowly become an excellent duo in combat. Sakura learns to anticipate the deployment of his space-time ninjutsu and starts coordinating her taijutsu to him without any explicit direction. She boxes opponents in before and catches them unaware after Sasuke’s Amenotejikara, despite how rarely they encounter foes strong enough to merit his usage of the technique. Sasuke would like to think he is not so predictable and yet after two or three instances, Sakura already has him all figured out. Sasuke, smiling wryly, is reminded of a brainy young girl who aced the entire written portion of a Chūnin exam that was _designed_ to be impossible for genin.

No, it is the long silent stretches between the truncated skirmishes with bandits or missing-nin or terrorist factions in which he sees the warring places he resides in within Sakura’s head and heart. She flinches, barely perceptibly, at the sound of the briefest Chidori he uses to light their campfire, and stiffens just minutely when he turns to look at her with his Mangekyō active. But worst of all, he can read the discordant tremors in her tightened lips, that cognitive screeching she battles, each time a memory is dislodged, each detail dredged from the depths.

Her feelings alone cannot outrun the years of distrust he sowed within her.

It is, he knows, his fault. But after more than a decade of limiting his vulnerabilities, whittling his weaknesses down until he was little more than an impenetrable weapon first for avenging his clan and then for destroying his village, he is left with little ability for softness in his words, having long ago destroyed any utterance that could indicate his own fallibility. Action was the only language he had allowed himself. And so the only apology he can manage is the distance he deliberately keeps between them when they rest atop a tree branch or when they unroll their packs at night to sleep. 

—

But perhaps due to mostly due to the proximity and forced intimacy of traveling as a pair, Sasuke does no better with masking the shadows looming in his past, either.

He is able to keep from screaming at least, he thinks, but he cannot suppress the choking gasps that escape him as he jolts awake, the vision of Itachi’s dying breath still dissolving before him while the searing pain of a limb long gone rampantly tortures him. The tears must have started before he opened his eyes, because he can already feel the wet tracks where they have slid down his temples and dampened the thin cushion beneath him. He chokes, trying to sit up, trying to do anything other than twitch, half-paralyzed by the spasming he knows _is not actually there_ , and the abortive noise of his agony what prompts a sound he recognizes as someone hastily crawling over the grass.

Sakura comes into his field of vision as she leans over him, and he shudders involuntarily as she brings a glowing hand to his face. “Shhh,” she soothes.

His tongue is too thick in his dry mouth to respond with anything. The burning rages on.

He feels the hazy tingle of her chakra at his tear-stained temple, knows she is reading his vitals to rule out more dire possibilities before turning to what she suspects the issue is. Seemingly reassured, she turns her attention to what remains of his left arm. He grits his teeth, huffing out through his nostrils as he weathers the waves of pain, and she looks up at him with obvious worry in her eyes. “I’m going to do what I can, okay? Tell me if it’s making it worse,” she implores softly.

It is the first time in weeks - since the incident he cannot stop thinking of - he has felt the smooth brush of her skin, and the relief that comes moments later is so immediate, so overwhelming, that sleep pulls him under almost immediately.

The next thing he registers is light breaking through the canopy. He turns to find her slumped beside him, half on his bedroll and half on the dirt. Her warm fingers are resting atop the stump of his arm, which he finds freshly bandaged with an adhesive salve he does not recall being applied. He can feel her chakra imbued in it, cool and soothing on the dull throbbing that is worlds better than the blistering pain he experienced the night prior.

Sasuke studies her sleeping face closely, noticing how even in sleep her brow is furrowed over, and unthinkingly he reaches up to smooth the soft skin over before he hesitates, remembering the flashing of her eyes the last time he surprised her with an outstretched hand. But he lets her slumber on, late into the morning, her hands still gently cradling the truncated end of his broken body.

—

After the near-disaster of startling her a week into their journey together, Sasuke had spent nearly the first two months of traveling together limiting their physical contact as much as possible. He had deduced that even if she had come with him of her own volition out of a devotion he could hardly understand, his touch, which had threatened to hurt her for so many years, was a toxin she could not tolerate.

He finds himself rethinking this conclusion in light of the softness of her hands on his missing arm. Was it truly his touch that was to blame, or was it something more hazy around the edges, something harder to grip onto?

“That Chidori of yours,” she mutters, so exhausted she is barely aware of her own words. Managing his pain has taken its toll on her. She is beside him as he squats before the pit of kindling and logs she has built, and Sasuke goes rigid.

But she smiles tiredly, and his chest tightens. “I know Kakashi-sensei taught that one to you, but…I always thought yours sounded nicer. There was always something about the chirping-” she leans against his shoulder, the extent of her fatigue mingling with the sweetness of the gesture - “that was more lively in yours."

Suddenly, it occurs to him that perhaps he had been wrong all along to assume this journey of atonement was his and his alone. Sakura might not carry the burden of his sins, but she carries a burden nonetheless - one which spans an entire war, but with him at center stage. Sasuke himself is no stranger to the memories he would rather forget, the ones that play out behind his eyelids night after night. Even by shinobi standards, the things they have seen are enough for several lifetimes.

And so much of what must haunt her is the ghosts of so many different Sasukes, each of whom had personally carved so much hurt into her, and yet each one still someone she could not bear to abandon to his own myopic rage.

He can never undo those six years, but he least he could do now is to attempt to scratch some little line in the sand between Uchiha Sasuke and the raw hurt in Sakura’s heart. She needs, he realizes, a better Sasuke, or at least the one he is trying to become now.

The flames lick up quickly after the fleeting birdsong at his fingertips dies off. Tentatively, Sasuke lifts his arm, Sakura still leaning into it, and wraps it around her shoulder. And as if she knew he would, she fits herself against the side of his chest, head coming to rest in the curve of his neck. He breathes in deeply, taking in the scent of her hair, and then suddenly the strands shift under his nose as she turns her face up towards his.

He freezes as he feels her lips brush over his cheek, feels the heat rushing to the spot they touch as she nestles back against him. And slowly, he feels at least one wrong begin to turn into something he would nearly call right.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a series of one-shots, all taking place during the two years Sakura and Sasuke spend traveling together. I conceived of them because I have loved this ship since I was a kid but the older I get, the more I realize how toxic it is, and how little of that toxicity is addressed. I get that it's not the main focus or character arc in Naruto, but b o y is Kishi not so good at writing romantic relationships involving female characters. (At least he knows this about himself ~~but idk dude maybe you could like, consult a woman writer come ON~~.)
> 
> So I wanted to try and create a world in which all that messy, complex healing that occurs before they can get to where they are by the time Boruto occurs. There's a lot of trauma between them, some of which Sasuke deliberately and unequivocally inflicted upon Sakura, and this seemed like an opportunity to explore how, if ever, two people can recover from that in a manner meaningful enough to transcend that history and love each other without reservation.
> 
> And fret not. There will be smut. (It's already written.)
> 
> Let me know what you think!
> 
> Love,  
> pudge


End file.
